Every Saturday the Princes and their sister held a reception at Bellechasse, so as to form them early to habits of polite conversation.
At the end of her account of her “academy,” Madame de Genlis sketches a series of portraits of her élèves. We are only interested in that of Pamela: “Pamela was loveliness itself; candour and sensibility were the chief traits of her character. She never told a falsehood, or employed the slightest deceit. She was a fascinating talker. Her chief fault was want of application. She had a very bad memory, and was thoughtless and impulsive. In person she was very active and light of foot. She ran like a wood nymph.”
It was part of the system of Bellechasse to interest its pupils in the great currents of thought which agitated the day. As early as 1786 the Countess had shown the popular and democratic direction she gave to the education of the princes of Orleans when the young Duke of Chartres, acting under her influence, destroyed the famous iron cage of Saint Michel.
When the States General met in May, 1789, Madame de Genlis threw open the salon of Bellechasse to some of the more noted deputies. Among the names of its habitués figure Barère and Brissot, Pétion, Tallyrand, Alexandre Lameth, and even Volney, Barneve, Alguié, the painter David—and Camille Desmoulins.
The outbreak of the Revolution found the young princes and their father on the popular side, and their choice has been traced to the influence of Madame de Genlis.
We get brief but very vivid glimpses of Pamela amid the gossip, enshrined in contemporary memoirs, which the Countess’s political action inspired. When the Duke of Orleans settled an annuity on her, she is said to have chosen Barère, then present at one of the Bellechasse Sunday receptions, as her guardian. She was seen, a striking figure on horseback, in riding habit and large black hat laden with black plumes, followed by two grooms in the Orleans livery of blue and red riding up and down between two lines of shrieking populace who proclaimed: “there’s the queen we want.” And on the day of the fall of the Bastille she was said to have been seen moving among the people all dressed in red, destined to draw all eyes to her.
It seems much more probable that she assisted at this historic spectacle with the rest of Madame de Genlis’s pupils from the terrace of the new gardens of Beaumarchais which the latter had put at their disposition.
The indignation of the Duchess of Orleans at the direction given to her children’s political education by their “Governor” led to the latter’s dismissal in 1791. But the separation from her teacher had such a disastrous effect on the health of Mademoiselle d’Orléans that Madame de Genlis had to be recalled.